‘How much of Jane Austen’s story is about sadness?’ A Q&A with novelist Paul Butler

At the recent JASNA AGM in Huntington Beach, Calif., one of the many interesting people I enjoyed meeting and talking to was Paul Butler, whose wonderfully inventive takeoff on “Persuasion” kept me enthralled the whole journey home. After reading “The Widow’s Fire,” (started in the LAX departure lounge, finished on the A train back in Brooklyn), I will never see Mrs. Smith or Captain Wentworth the same way again. But it’s not a travesty — more of a radical rethinking, a bit the way Jean Rys flips the narrative in “Wide Sargasso Sea.”

Mr. Butler has in turn done me the honor of reading my book and kindly invited me to answer some questions on his blog. Link here.